Mentors! UPDATE

Akron, Ohio is very cold right now...

Florida...whereabouts?  I make it down there a few times a year to see the inlaws.  I find it hilarious that a lot of the Florida from Ohio people (my inlaws) so quickly lose their frame of reference and need to shut the doors and turn on the heat when it's mid 60's.

I hope that hasn't happened to you. 

If so, you can come up for a visit anytime in the next month and we can reacquaint you with all that you're missing.

Ron,

We just got an email from Trimom217 that she is dropping out as our mentor.  I feel a little weird looking for a new group now since everybody has gotten settled in.  Any ideas?  I think I'll be ok since I live with McFuzz and some of his mentoees check on me pretty regularly but it was nice to have someone from outside our 4 walls to keep me honest.

Beth

I would be honored!!!

YEAH, it sounds like you found a group which is great.  To others, this may happen, a lot can change in a persons life over 4 months and the mentor need to do what is needed to keep their life on track.

So if you find yourself without a mentor, either look through the forums for 'Open' designations or PM the group leader yourself, I'm sure most will be accommodating.

Ron,

The question was asked of me "what happens at the end of the 3 or 4 months"? Do we keep the group going, is everyone on their own, or are you going to keep this area open for people that want to keep going? What's you plans or ideas?

At the end of April, we will either start another new block of the mentor program (the last one of the year) to go through June OR just only do it once a year in January.

After each program round officially closes, I haven't really thought about what to do...hide the mentor forum until we start up a new round BUT you can still interact with your group more informally via logs and pm's.  OR perhaps just move the forum down and you can all access your group thread for as long as you want. OR I may just close the forum down and 'move' all of the individual mentor threads into the 'introduce yourself' forum and you can still use them there if you want...the reason for this is that I don't want older mentor threads mixing with new mentor threads when we 'restart' the program...could be confusing.

I'm open to suggestion though...

Tonya,

Definitely check out a few groups and pm the leader...I'm sure most will be accommodating. 

You also have some good ideas regarding enhancing this program navigation-wise.  For now the quickest way to easily access the group is if you just link the group thread in your 'goals' are of the log....but making some more direct links to it that user don't have to configure would be nice like you mentioned.

Ron,

First, I'd leave the mentor forum open, as those who are using it are probably benefiting.

My suggestion for going foward would be:

"Restart" all of the threads (as after I while I think they will get too long being 10 pages or whatever.)  Let the mentors restart their threads with their current group if they wish (so they will start off being full) or if they want to add some new members or get a whole new group, they can edit their threads as before.  You can just let the mentors manage this part.

Yes, this means that you will have more mentors (most likely) but since it is self-managed anyway, once you set them up as a mentor it shouldn't be a big deal, at least I wouldn't think so.

*sigh*  I'm kinda bummed I missed out on the mentoring stuff - I really only kick it back into gear in Feb and I'd like to be a mentor (if anyone would have me) so I am hoping you at least open this up once more this year.  Otherwise, I guess I will just have to pay better attention next year.

Nate and Nancy,

Browse through some of the mentor threads, see who you like and is active and then PM the mentor to see if they can accept you.  I'm sure most can be accommodating.